Featured Research

from universities, journals, and other organizations

Meditation helps increase attention span

Date:

July 16, 2010

Source:

Association for Psychological Science

Summary:

It's nearly impossible to pay attention to one thing for a long time. A new study looks at whether Buddhist meditation can improve a person's ability to be attentive and finds that meditation training helps people do better at focusing for a long time on a task that requires them to distinguish small differences between things they see.

Share This

A new study looks at whether Buddhist meditation can improve a person's ability to be attentive and finds that meditation training helps people do better at focusing for a long time on a task that requires them to distinguish small differences between things they see.

It's nearly impossible to pay attention to one thing for a long time. A new study looks at whether Buddhist meditation can improve a person's ability to be attentive and finds that meditation training helps people do better at focusing for a long time on a task that requires them to distinguish small differences between things they see.

Related Articles

The research was inspired by work on Buddhist monks, who spend years training in meditation. "You wonder if the mental skills, the calmness, the peace that they express, if those things are a result of their very intensive training or if they were just very special people to begin with," says Katherine MacLean, who worked on the study as a graduate student at the University of California, Davis. Her co-advisor, Clifford Saron, did some research with monks decades ago and wanted to study meditation by putting volunteers through intensive training and seeing how it changes their mental abilities.

About 140 people applied to participate; they heard about it via word of mouth and advertisements in Buddhist-themed magazines. Sixty were selected for the study. A group of thirty people went on a meditation retreat while the second group waited their turn; that meant the second group served as a control for the first group. All of the participants had been on at least three five-to-ten day meditation retreats before, so they weren't new to the practice. They studied meditation for three months at a retreat in Colorado with B. Alan Wallace, one of the study's co-authors and a meditation teacher and Buddhist scholar.

The people took part in several experiments; results from one are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. At three points during the retreat, each participant took a test on a computer to measure how well they could make fine visual distinctions and sustain visual attention. They watched a screen intently as lines flashed on it; most were of the same length, but every now and then a shorter one would appear, and the volunteer had to click the mouse in response.

Participants got better at discriminating the short lines as the training went on. This improvement in perception made it easier to sustain attention, so they also improved their task performance over a long period of time. This improvement persisted five months after the retreat, particularly for people who continued to meditate every day.

The task lasted 30 minutes and was very demanding. "Because this task is so boring and yet is also very neutral, itβ€™s kind of a perfect index of meditation training," says MacLean. "People may think meditation is something that makes you feel good and going on a meditation retreat is like going on vacation, and you get to be at peace with yourself. That's what people think until they try it. Then you realize how challenging it is to just sit and observe something without being distracted."

This experiment is one of many that were done by Saron, MacLean and a team of nearly 30 researchers with the same group of participants. It's the most comprehensive study of intensive meditation to date, using methods drawn from fields as diverse as molecular biology, neuroscience, and anthropology. Future analyses of these same volunteers will look at other mental abilities, such as how well people can regulate their emotions and their general well-being.

More From ScienceDaily

More Mind & Brain News

Featured Research

Mar. 3, 2015  No significant change in home habits of smokers have been observed in the aftermath of a ban on smoking in public spaces, researchers report. Greater inspiration to kick the habit likely comes from ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015  Heart function has been associated with the development of dementia and Alzheimer's disease through a new study. Participants with decreased heart function, measured by cardiac index, were two to ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015  Children of recently separated or divorced families are likelier to drink sugar-sweetened beverages than children in families where the parents are married, putting them at higher risk for obesity ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015  Why do people shake hands? A new study suggests one of the reasons for this ancient custom may be to check out each other's odors. Even if we are not consciously aware of this, handshaking may ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015  It appears that stress markers in unemployed people can be found, independent of smoking, alcohol consumption and overweight/obesity. Results from a study suggest that long-term unemployment may be ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015  Doctors write millions of prescriptions a year for drugs to calm the behavior of people with Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia. But non-drug approaches actually work better, and carry ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015  Briefly counseling college students on the dangers of binge drinking is effective in lowering heavy drinking levels among many students, but only temporarily. Three out of four will be right back ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015  Loneliness brought about by the death of a spouse can trigger a wider network of depression-like symptoms, a study has found, but authors suggest that doctors are often too quick to attribute these ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015  Family Based Interpersonal Psychotherapy (FB-IPT) is more effective in treating preadolescent children with depression compared to child-centered therapy (CCT), a recent study has found. ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015  Everyone worries about losing their memory as they grow older—memory loss remains one of the most common complaints of the elderly. But the molecular reasons behind the processes remain unclear, ... full story

Related Stories

Feb. 25, 2015  Meditation might be an effective treatment for reducing chronic neck pain, according to research. Chronic neck pain can lead to serious comorbidities like depression. Patients with chronic neck pain ... full story

Oct. 28, 2014  Certain meditation techniques can promote creative thinking, even if you have never meditated before. The study is a clear indication that you don't need to be an experienced meditator to profit ... full story

Apr. 9, 2013  A new study shows that meditation before class might help students, especially freshmen, focus better and retain information. A random selection of students followed basic meditation instructions ... full story

July 7, 2011  In the late 1990s, Jane Anderson was working as a landscape architect. That meant she didn't work much in the winter, and she struggled with seasonal affective disorder in the dreary Minnesota ... full story

ScienceDaily features breaking news and videos about the latest discoveries in health, technology, the environment, and more -- from major news services and leading universities, scientific journals, and research organizations.